Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

@ben I suspect you're far from the only one for who that is true, unfortunately... which is exactly why that sentiment always pisses me off so much

@Sterophonick After thinking a bit more (because I realized that still described the vague shape of an owl at best), a practical way to go about this, is to just very frequently ask yourself "... why do I actually believe this?" and if the answer is something like "research" or "everybody knows that", follow it up with trying to work out where the idea originally comes from and what its purpose was, even for the things that seem obvious.

An example case would be "IQ" and its treatment as a legitimate metric - where does the metric come from, what was it invented to do?

@serapath @joelving @powersource I am going to stop trying to have this conversation because you keep making vague allusions to "attacks on Bitcoin" without ever substantiating what those attacks actually *are* and how they would work, and this is looking a lot more like a persecution complex than like a genuine failure and power dynamics analysis.

@Sterophonick As I understand it: to learn to recognize internal thought patterns and views that are informed by colonialist perspectives (on a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to stuff like 'growth', 'civilization', 'intelligence', etc.), and to work on getting rid of those and stepping back from the colonialist perspective, instead learning to view these things from the perspective of the colonized and oppressed.

Which is necessarily going to be a lot of work, there's no three-step plan.

@serapath @joelving @powersource I'm trying to get you to actually reason through the steps of what that 'crackdown' might look like and what would happen if you refuse to cooperate, rather than just saying "network effect" as some sort of magical incantation with inherent power (which it doesn't have; it needs an enforcement mechanism).

@serapath @joelving @powersource As I have explained several times now, you can keep using the old currency and only use the new currency with those who also accept it, and exchange between the two as needed - money has an interoperability that social networks do not.

You claim that that would be "cracked down upon" and I am still asking you *how* that would happen, because social convention alone does not make that possible.

Social networks have control over user account suspension and their APIs, and can limit interoperability, and that's how they can crack down on gradual transitions. Governments do not have that control over money.

So, how do they do it?

@PastaThief Would something like Drip (https://bloodyhealth.gitlab.io/) not be a safer recommendation because it is entirely local to your phone, and so never goes to any server anywhere to begin with?

(Given that things in Germany aren't going that great either)

@serapath @powersource I really, really am not interested in this discussion.

@serapath @joelving @powersource No, it is not. The network effect only applies for cases where a gradual transition is not viable. This is not one of those, if it works as you describe. So that isn't the answer either.

@serapath @joelving @powersource Again, "buying power" is a social convention that hinges on people accepting 'their' money as legitimate, so that's not the answer.

So *how* are they cracking down? What form of power do they have that cannot be trivially opposed?

@serapath @powersource And to be clear, I have absolutely no intention of following the usual "look at how great Bitcoin is" playbook. I've tried to argue these things with people for literal years, and I am done. It is a waste of your time and mine.

@serapath @powersource I am not going to watch Bitcoin propaganda. I am very well aware of the tendency for enthusiasts to selectively spread around 'success stories' while being suspiciously quiet about the failure stories. I am extremely close to the cryptocurrency world and I know what the true dynamics are.